Our Life At Sea
Welcome to our website - Our life At Sea. We are an Australian couple from Sydney who are living aboard and cruising on our Beneteau 393 sailing yacht "Sea Life". We hope you enjoy our website, please feel free to contact us via the 'contact' page or leave us a message on the website, we would love to hear from you! Smiles, Laughter & Happiness, Mark & Nicolle.
Our Life At Sea
We are transiting the Panama Canal Thursday 12th June (Panama time).
You can watch us live on the webcams as we go through the canal online at this website: www.pancanal.com click on the 'English button' then the 'webcam' page. Try this direct link to the webcam page: PanCanal.com
To check the local time in panama click on this easy link: Panama Time In Sydney (for example) they are a day ahead of us so it is 12 noon here on Wednesday 11th June as I write this but in Sydney it is 3am on Thursday morning.
There are webcams on the Gatun Locks & the Miraflores, the Centennial Bridges and other points of the canal. There is also a high resolution webcam at the Miraflores Locks which you can even zoom in on.
The best time to watch us go through the Gatun locks would be between about: 9- 11pm Thursday (12th) evening Panama time. The best time to watch us go through the Miraflores locks would be between about: 1pm - 3pm Friday (13th) afternoon Panama time.
Our boat is a white boat with sky blue sail covers and a red sail at the bow of the boat,she has a sky blue cover (bimini) and 2 blue stripes on her hull just above the waterline, you should see a large Australia flag at the stern of the boat. We will also have other 3 line handlers on the boat and an advisor!
It would be great if you could watch us going through, we would love to wave and smile at you as we are taking "Sea Life" on her first trip through the historic and famous Panama Canal.
We leave Colon Thursday evening at about 6pm. Our trip begins with our first advisor coming aboard and then we nest (tie up to the other 2 boats) and all go through the first 3 Gatun locks (which are locks going upwards - usually you have a large ship in front of you) during the evening, then we separate from the other boats, pick up a mooring for the evening (at midnight) in the beautiful lake, say goodbye to our first advisor, then have a little half way celebration, then relax & go to sleep. In the morning our second advisor comes aboard (8am approx) and we motor up the canal (35 nautical miles = 70kms) towards the last 3 locks (which takes a few hours- all morning and into the afternoon), we then nest up (tie up) again to the other boats and go through the last 3 locks (which are downwards locks) and then enter the Pacific side and anchor there.
We might spend a few days there or a week and do some provisioning etc before we set off to beautiful Galapagos Islands and then cross The Pacific Ocean. We are so excited and are having a wonderful time in Colon and getting ready for our exciting advenuture!! It is going to be lots of fun and we hope you can share the journey with us.
Our Panama Canal transit is on Wednesday 11th of June and you can watch us live on a webcam (http://www.pancanal.com and go to the webcam page) on one of the locks near the Bridge of the Americas. Its a 2 day transit starting at Colon and tieing up for the night in the middle of the jungle and then completing the canal to Panama City the next day. We also just visited the beautiful Rio De Chagros (River) for a few days and we saw the Howler monkeys, crocodiles, Butterflys and many other animals. 30/5/08
We sailed from the beautiful Saint Martin to Cristobel Harbour - Colon in Panama. It was a gorgeous sail which took us 10 days. We had a wonderful time relaxing, sailing and watching the ocean and all of the sea life around us. We even caught a lovely big tuna, which was just delicious! We saw 3 pods of dolphins, flying fish, sea birds, beautiful star filled nights, a full moon, and the magical bioluminescence which are microscopic algae that generate light, they look like sparkling faires dancing on the water around the boat. It is amazing!
Just finished out 1,100 nautical mile sail from Saint Martin to Colon, Panama. Thats over 2,000kms! We had a great time and Nicolle is fisherwonam extroadinaire! I'm sure she will tell you about it. Mmmmm those tuna taste great! 25/05/08
We have received our Australian registration and put our Australian flag on Sea Life. So she is now an offical fair dinkum Aussie! We also visited the beautiful & historic Fort Louis.
Tonight we are enjoying another beautiful Caribbean evening at Grand Case, one of our favorite places in Saint Martin. We can hear the gorgeous live French music from the shore and are sleeping on deck tonight in the gentle cool night breeze. That is one of our favorite places to sleep, out under the beautiful evening sky watching the sparkling magical stars and been rocked gently to sleep by our boat. Last time we slept on deck I saw a shooting star and made a very special wish! Tomorrow we are going to take a short day sail and try out our new fishing hand reels and see if we can catch a nice yummy fresh tuna from the back of the boat, yum I can't wait to have some of the freshest fish I will have had in my life. Other than that we are having a wonderful and relaxing time together on our treasured "Sea Life". Wishing you a happy and wonderful week! Smiles, Nicolle xxoo 08/05/08
We have been living aboard our lovely boat "Sea Life" now for two weeks and are anchored at Grand Case on the French side of the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean. Life on our boat is just glorious and we are enjoying it so very much. We are both happy and relaxed, getting to know our boat and enjoying some treasured sailing time. Grand Case is a beautiful area, so peaceful and just gorgeous! Today we are going to "Walrus" which is our term for simply relaxing and doing nothing but enjoy the beautiful Caribbean (or in other words to just be completely relaxed and laze in the sun like a Walrus does). We might go for swim in the beautiful water, or do some turtle spotting, or have an afternoon nap... but whatever we do we will be relaxing and enjoying our time together on "Sea Life". We wanted to say thank you to our friends and family for supporting us on our new journey and for keeping in touch. It is always lovely to get your emails, phone calls and messages on the website. We miss you and hope you are all happy and well. Have a wonderful "Walrusy" day. Love Nic & Mark xxoo 24/04/08
Knocked off another site: Mark Twain “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” 5/04/08
Mark has added a map to show our current location in the world and our journey on the "route" page of the website, he has also added a new web message function on this page and his page so that you can leave us a message on the website, how cute!!! Thanks for visiting our website, Nicolle 31/3/08
Our boat has just been named: Sea Life 26/3/08
There is still a few weeks work before we take delivery of Sea Life, but the confirmation from the Australian Ship Registry came through a few minutes ago confirming her narten, Netherlands Antilles where she is getting her bottom scrubbed, scraped and some antifouling paint. Other work is making sure her equipment is all functioning and ready for her life at sea.
We are currently in Saint Maarten in the Caribbean. Here are a few photos taken by Nicolle from this beautiful part of the world. 21.3.08
We just bought our boat!!! (14/3/08)
Details to follow but she is a Beneteau 393. Thats 39 feet and quite large enough for friends to come and stay!
This site is about our sailing and as we get going so will it.
We have left Sydney, Australia and are now in the USA to begin our exciting sailing adventures. 5/3/08:
We got engaged! There are some photos from the real life moment, taken by the wonderful Cathy Crawley on the "Mark & Nicolle" page, see more of Cathy's lovely photos on her website: beautifulmoments.com.au 13/02/08
This site is about our sailing and as we get going so will it. 01/02/08